All Politics -- Nothing About The Bakken -- February 12, 2020

New Hampshire: I watched the reporting of the New Hampshire, 2020, primary on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News. Most of the time I spent on MSNBC: it's so much fun watching their reactions and how they spin (or try to spin) the news. Observations:

• all night, on MSNBC, Brian Williams kept trying to bring the story back to the DOJ prosecutors that resigned over the "Stone" case; he was never able to get that narrative going; both my wife and I follow the news very, very closely (my wife more than I, in fact) and neither of us could remember exactly what "Stone" had done; most Americans won't even know who "Stone" was;
• if I had watched MSNBC only, I would have thought that turnout was poor for the GOP; in fact, I would not even have been aware anyone voted in the GOP primary but we will get to those numbers later

Turnout in New Hampshire: this is absolutely amazing.

• Trump doubled Obama's 2012 vote total in New Hampshire;
• with 87% of precincts reporting:
  Trump: 120,000 votes
• Obama, with 100% of precincts reporting: 49,080 votes
• the gap will increase once all 2020 votes are in
• incumbent President George W. Bush: 53,962 votes (2004)
• incumbent President Bill Clinton: 76,797 votes (1996)
• there was a coordinated effort by RNC and Trump to drive up turnout for Trump in NH
• Trump had huge rally in Manchester, NH, on the eve of the state's primary
• Trump's rally: more than all other rallies in NH that same night (my hunch: more were turned away from Trump's rally due to lack of room) than actually went to Dem rallies)
• voters "seemed to have a zeal uncommon for supporters of an incumbent president"
• Sanders/Buttigieg, combined: 140,000 votes with 87% precincts voting

Spin: from the Minot Daily News -- there were so many headlines one could have written --

• there are still more open jobs than there are unemployed people, an unusual situation that has persisted for nearly two years:
• before that, the ranks of those out of work exceeded the number of open jobs (and Obama famously said those jobs were never coming back; he was "writing" off the unemployed as a hopeless situation)
• job openings have fallen; now at their lowest level in two years
• the decline comes after job openings hit highest level on records dating back to December 2002
• nearly all other measures of labor market remain healthy
• so the AP headline writer chose one data point of many to use as the headline; one data point that could be spun as negative; all others very, very positive and signally a strong jobs market
• as bad as the spin was at the Minot Daily News, it would have been worse at The Bismarck Tribune;

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